If occupants of a commercial building could, at intervals, conveniently provide subjective input regarding their level of comfort, then lighting, temperature, ventilation and other variables could be automatically adjusted so that the majority of occupants were substantially satisfied. Traditional methods of polling such as paper-based subjective questionnaires can be handed out or mailed to occupants, but this is perceived to be a relatively large distraction and disturbance. Furthermore, priming, circulating and processing questionnaires is time consuming and costly. At times, subjects do not cooperate by filling in questionnaires, and furthermore, it may be essential when gathering some types of information to have the data collected from employees at particular times of day. For example, a company may want to determine the thermal comfort level of its employees; a questionnaire may ask if they comfortable, too warm, or too cold. In some situations an employee's comfort may change throughout the work-day and, from location to location within a building; thermal comfort may vary with external conditions, such the position of the sun at various times of the day. In this instance, it would be advantageous to obtain feedback from employees at particular times during the day and over a period of several days, weeks, or months. After obtaining useful feedback, an employer can attempt to make modifications to the building or to its heating or air-conditioning system in accordance with the collected data. Of course, it would be difficult to administer this kind of repetitive questioning using a paper-based questionnaire and it would likely be very disruptive. Therefore, it is one object of this invention, to provide a convenient method for collecting data, analyzing the collected data and, for making an environmental change or a change to a process in dependence upon the collected data.
In the past, some awkward attempts have been made to obtain subjective responses from building occupants in a more convenient way than using a paper-questionnaire. For example, in a paper entitled The Thermal Environment in Offices, David S. Fishman and Stephen L. Pimbert in Energy and Buildings, 5 (1982) 109-116, describe a study where the reactions of 26 subjects were recorded in a commercial building throughout the day for one year. At hourly intervals a central control system was arranged to initiate a two minute voting period during which time the subjects were requested to register a vote corresponding to one of seven positions on a seven point "Bedford" scale which relates to thermal comfort. The votes were stored in a special-purpose, built, control cabinet logic rack. To ensure that as many subjects as possible voted at a required time, a warning lamp and buzzer were activated at the commencement of the voting period. The lamp remained on for the two minute voting period or until the subject had voted. Although useful data was collected, the system employed for taking and recording subject's responses was costly, inflexible, and limited. Seven toggle switches provided by the specialized voting hardware offered only a limited choice in the responses that could be provided. If the subjects were not present during the time the warning lamp and buzzer were activated, they could miss the opportunity to vote. Furthermore, the lamp and buzzer were potential annoyances to others close by but not participating in the study. Another limitation was that the single question the subjects were to answer had to be known in advance by the subjects. To obtain additional data on clothing, subjects were provided with weekly paper-based questionnaires that were filled in by each subject and from which the thermal insulation of their clothing was estimated. Of course, having more detailed data would have been advantageous but was not practicable given the limitations of the equipment employed in this study.
A variety of other systems are known, which poll at intervals, however these systems are limited to polling hardware to obtain data rather than polling humans to obtain subjective responses to particular questions which have an impact on controlling a process. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,315,53 1, issued May 24, 1994 and assigned to Westinghouse Electric is entitled "Energy Monitoring System for a Plurality of Local Stations With Snapshot Polling From a Central Station" and relates to a personal computer (PC) for monitoring the energy, power, voltage, and current consumed at a plurality of local stations; A command from the PC causes at each station, the power, voltage, current and totaled energy to be stored, and thereafter the PC computer derives individually the results for separate estimations and central billing. In another U.S. Pat. No. 5,194,846 issued in 1993 an invention entitled "Communication System Capable of Broadcast Messaging and Transponder Polling", a communication system controller is coupled over a communication path with two or more transponders. Periodic polls of all transponders in sequence provide supervision of the integrity of the system.
Numerous other systems exist which poll or take samples at intervals from a plurality of device sensors, and although these systems may adequately control devices in response to polling, there remains a need for a system which is capable of polling the users of computer systems from time to time, to determine their subjective responses to particular questions so that the results can be compiled into useful control data.